A dragon screamed from the darkness below us—a little bit of rage, and a whole lot of agony. The heart-breaking sound was followed by a series of rapid wheezes.
“Traka!” I shouted.
“I know.”
“Fly down,” I ordered, my voice broken with shivers.
“Dima…”
“Thula.”
With a hiss, Thula banked away from the driving snow and spiral toward the sound. Snow frosted the tops of the dark pine trees that obscured anything on the ground from sight.
“Light it up.”
Thula took another deep breath and released another burst of fire, this one bigger, billowing several meters ahead of us. And for a brief moment, I saw Traka in a small clearing, her frail old head emerging from a very large and very tangled net.
“This smells like a trap.”
“It’s already been sprung,” I shouted over the howling wind and screaming dragon. “We can’t leave her like that! It would be cruel.”
Thula heaved a sigh beneath me. “You have more heart than even I bargained for.”
But her feet crunched down in the snow. Waves of white washed rolled through the clearing. Traka was a wheezing, flailing shadow, barely more visible than the ghost they intended for her to become. Glancing up, I saw no moon or stars to guide me, only a dark fluffy blanket of clouds meant to smother us.
I swung my leg off Thula’s back, meaning to climb down the stirrups, but my foot slipped on the ice-crusted over the middle one, and I tumbled backward into a snow drift, knocking the wind from my lungs. Thula’s head hovered into view, and she flared her nostrils, revealing the smoldering tissue within.
Scrambling out of the snow bank, I looked around for the nearest tree. Chunks of snow slid down by shiny chest plate, while others fell off my helmet into the tiny space between the two pieces of armor, leaving icy trails down my back. I waded through the drift I’d climbed out of, sinking up to my knees. Snow crumbled into my boots.
The tree found me first, poking its spiny needles into my numb face. Grasping the thin branch, I followed it to the source and leaned my weight on it until it popped free, showering my eyes with tiny specks of wood. I blinked and blinked, but they continued to sting as I dragged the branch back to my dragon.
“A torch,” I gasped, thrust it toward her.
She exhaled hot flames and the branch crackled to life—well, life for me, death for it. Holding it before me, I slogged through the thickening snow toward Traka’s struggling silhouette.
Her eyes flashed in the fresh light—clouded over pink, like she didn’t even have the strength to be blood-red furious. She snaked her head at me, teeth bared, her dull crystal gem glimmered faintly in the fire’s glow. Her bit cut into the corners of her mouth.
“It’s okay,” I said slowly, holding out my other hand to show it held no weapon. “I’m here to help you.”
Traka hissed, her long forked tongue slithering between her fangs. I noticed for the first time that her lower pair both had their points broken off or worn down. She wriggled in the net, trying in vain to lift wings that sparkled with ice. I eased around her, hopefully out of reach of her snapping teeth, to study the net.
Thick straps of hogsteed hide were woven with ropes as thick as my arms, like the kind I’d seen in drawings of the ships that sailed the Great Seas. There were also chains threaded through the mix, creating not just an enormous piece of mesh, but a puzzle that I didn’t have time to solve.
Hot breath blasted my face as Traka’s teeth snapped within six inches of my helmet. But no embers were glowing within her trembling nostrils. This dragon had run out of fire.
“Traka, I want to help you, but you can’t try to eat me,” I said in slow, musical sort of voice that I thought might be calming. “Can you do that for me? Not eat me?”
Traka’s tan scales flared weakly, and she narrowed her pink eyes. Her tail thumped under the net, sending up a cloud of snow. I would start back there.
“Thula, don’t let her eat me, okay?”
I heard Thula’s body crunching through the snow as she drew closer, her large face appearing in my small ring of light. The branch was already a third as long as it had been.
Traka whipped her head at Thula, but Thula snapped back, just short of clacking their teeth together. She emitted the rapid clicking noise I’d come to think of as happiness. Traka’s head tilted in confusion. She made a questioning sort of chirp.
I hurried around to her tail and grasped the net near the ground, aiming to determine it if enveloped her fully or if was it simply draped over her and pegged to the ground. But ice made my armored gloves slippery, and I couldn’t maintain a grip. I would just have to start cutting and hope for the best. Driving my end of the torch into the snow until it stood erect on its own, I drew my sword from its scabbard.
I placed the blade against one of the thick rope pieces and began to saw. The sword swept right through the fibers, easy as cutting bovo butter for a greenloaf. Hope flickered inside me. I tried a piece of hogsteed leather next. It gave a little more resistance, but not much. I grinned at my gleaming blade. Only the best for future Legionnaires.
As I worked, my mind drifted to the Northern Fort where the winner would be arriving any time now. Perhaps it would be Yarben. I could stomach losing the gemlinks to him. He was from the Ulrich Territory, way out west, and compared to the other Nobles, he was practically a pauper.
Traka’s head waved from side to side as if held in some sort of trance by Thula’s rapid clicking. Her eyes were slowly fading back to yellow and her scales her flattened, which would conserve more of her body heat. Dragons were not particularly sensitive to cold—they did prefer to nest on Drakken Peak—but anything would freeze if you left it buried in a snow bank. It was obvious to me that Kaelina had been in on her own ambush, allowing her dragon to be trapped and then escaping with the second-years who had been ordered not to harm a hair on her precious Noble head. Killing Traka outright would have taken far too much time and effort, even in her elderly state. These were war monsters. They were not easily defeated. No, they had planned to let nature takes its overnight course. Slow and painful enough, but for Traka to know her bonded partner had abandoned her.
Gritting my teeth together and growling, I sliced faster and faster. My torch burned down until the flame danced just above the rising snow. Soon, the two would meet, and darkness would reign.
“Thula, can you get another branch or two? Stick them into the ground like this and light them up.”
Thula’s body shifted away, and a blast of freezing wind slammed into me, knocking me onto my side in the snow. Traka screeched and lunged at me, sweeping her tail out of my reach. The good news was her tail was free; the bad was that my sword had gone with it.
With her hindquarter loosened, Traka lumbered to her feet, snapping several pieces of the net herself with loud pops. Her wings fought to lift off her back, but the net held them in place. Hissing, she struck at me, coming away with a mouth full of snow.
“You’re welcome!” I shouted, rolling out of her reach.
Her scales flared, and her head shot out, eyes once again filling with pink. But Thula’s tail whizzed over my head and met her neck halfway like swords crossing. Thula held her back like that as the rest of her own body curved around so that her head guarded me from above. She spit two thick pine branches in front of me.
Standing up, I drove them into the snow just in time. A moment later, the first torch flickered. Thula set the two new ones ablaze. My sword glinted in the snow only a few feet away. I dove toward it before the snow could swallow it up.
Something whistled past my head and plunked into the snow just in front of me. Blinking the ice crystals from my eyelashes, my heart stopped.
A crossbow bolt.
Clutching my sword, I rolled over, pointing it toward the ambushing second-year.
But the man who stood within my torches’ glow was no student. He wore pitch black armor and a thick beard
protruded from his helmet, hiding everything but his sneering lips and many-times-broken nose. He aimed his crossbow straight at my face.
“Lord Lanthe was right,” he chuckled. “You’d have never made it in the Legion Army with a bleeding heart like this.”
I closed my eyes against the specter of my own stupidity. Thula had been right. It was a trap—not for Traka, but for me. Because I’d given away too much when I let Lanthe see my disdain for his daughter’s abusive behavior. He’d gambled that I would stop to help and won. Part me of wondered if he’d known Raff and I were hiding in the nest that night if he and Centrival had meant for me to hear what they planned to do Traka.
My eyes cut to Thula who stood strangely still, and for one heart-stopping second I thought she had betrayed me. But then a shadow moved on her back, and my heart started just to stop again. Another soldier stood on her back, his long sword wedged between Thula’s shoulder blades, in front of the saddle, where she had no scales to protect her. Her tail quivered with the effort of holding back Traka, whose pinks eyes darted between the strange men and me.
Thula’s eyes blazed red at the soldier below her, the one with the crossbow. She could strike that man easily, but the one on her back would be on me in a second. What he would not do is strike Thula. That threat was a bluff. I imagined Lanthe would have the head of anyone who harmed the dragon he so coveted for his daughter.
I closed my eyes.
“A real warrior would watch herself die,” one of the men jeered.
“Let her go.” I sent the thought to Thula, and then opened my eyes and lifted my chin, just as my father had when faced with Lord Lanthe.
If dragons could smile, Thula would have. Her mouth parted with a hiss and her tail slammed into the snow, hard enough to rattle the crossbowman off his feet. Traka’s jaws snapped, and metal crunched. The soldier on Thula’s back screamed as Traka thrashed her head from the side, spraying the white snow with red blood. Her head jerked, and she tossed the man into the air, catching him by his legs which snapped off in her mouth like twigs. The soldier’s torso dropped into the snow, unleashing a river of blood.
Tearing my eyes from the gruesome scene, I found the man with the crossbow had vanished. Thula shook out her wings, spraying snow and ice with the force of an explosion.
“Where did he go?”
A crossbow bolt whistled by, punching into Traka’s neck. She shrieked and flailed, swinging her freed tail around the clearing, driving up a wave of snow. Another bolt whizzed by, and Traka screamed again. They still have orders to kill her too.
But as she struggled onto her front legs, more of the net snapped free… If I could just cut those… I jumped up with my sword and raced toward the terrified dragon. Immediately, a bolt plunged into the back of my shin. I tumbled forward into the blood-stained snow. My head came up, spitting out the sickening taste of iron.
Thula roared, shaking the snow from the trees. Her tail beat the ground in fury.
“I’ve got her in my sights, dragon,” the voice came from the trees. “One more move and she’s done.”
I knew it didn’t matter one way or another what Thula did. This man wasn’t leaving until he killed me. But Thula froze, one front leg lifted off the ground, claws extended, her wings jutting out from her back.
“Thatta girl,” the voice said. “Now walk away. Nice and slow. No one wants to see a pretty girl like you hurt.”
“Do it,” I said. Just in case.
Thula backed away, lowering her head and shooting plumes of steam at the ground. Her wings folded in.
“Good dragon,” the soldier said, stepping out of the clearing with his crossbow aimed at me.
Something swept into the clearing with a furious rush of wind, blowing out the torches as it crashed into the ground. The soldier screamed as metal squealed.
“Dima, run!” a voice shouted.
Arlen. It was Arlen and Elanich. I could just make out the dragon’s ice blue wings, the rest of his white body invisible in the driving snow. I tried to stand, but the bolt in my leg wouldn’t let me, so I crawled, sinking deeper and deeper into the snow. I had lost all sense of where Thula was, or even Traka. The whole world was white and thrashing.
The soldier’s scream broke off with another disgusting metal crunch.
Chapter Seventeen
“Dima.”
My eyes fluttered open. I was on my back. Strong arms cradled me.
“Dima, wake up,” Arlen shook me gently. His face swam into focus, ice clinging to his eyebrows and snowflakes frosting his thick black hair.
I groaned, pain pulsating from the back of my leg. We were still in the clearing, but he’d lit a small fire and Thula and Elanich were protecting the flames with their extended wings. The snow that had piled on my chest plate slid away as I sat up.
“Traka…” I whispered.
“She’s alive.” He shook his head, but there was admiration in his tone. “You fool.”
I touched my hand to my pounding head, but there was still a thick helmet encasing it. “I couldn’t just leave her like that.”
“Lanthe knew.” Arlen’s lips curled in disgust. “He told Kaelina where to land, had his men entrap Traka, and spirited Kaelina away. She won’t win this Trial, but she’ll return with a sob story about how you killed her beloved dragon. Everyone will agree that the only fair thing is to give her yours—now that you’re dead.”
“But I’m not,” I said, half-checking in myself.
“No.” His lips twitched. “You’re not.”
I sat up straighter, squinting into the firelight. “Where is Traka? Did you let her go?”
“She’s there.” He pointed, and I saw the dark shape through the snow. “She wore herself out. She is thousands of years old, you know.”
“But did you free her?”
Arlen frowned. “Dima, you must understand that even if you free her, she’ll just return to Kaelina and they’ll try again. It might be kinder…”
“No!” I tried to stand and pain shot through my leg. “She deserves better.”
“There is no better out there for her,” Arlen said softly, and then he brushed a strand of hair from my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
I grabbed him by the upper lip of his chest plate and pulled him toward me. “I know how to free her. Truly free her.”
Arlen’s brows knit together. “Dima…”
“Help me over to her. Try not to wake her.”
Arlen sighed, but he slid his arm under my shoulders and lifted me to my one good leg. This must be how Pali feels every day. I took a few halting steps, and he sighed again. His other arm swept under my knees and he carried me to Traka’s sleeping head. Black blood dribbled out from around the bolts in her neck, but it was nothing a dragon couldn’t recover from. Her gem glimmered in the firelight.
“Where is my sword?” I asked as he stood me on one good leg and supported my other side.
“I’ve no idea. Dima, what you do you intend to do exactly?”
“Give me yours,” I said, hobbling forward.
My knees collapsed, and I fell beside the sleeping dragon’s head. She wheezed.
“The sword,” I snarled. “Give me your sword.”
Arlen obeyed. I held the short sword in my hands. This would work better anyway. Pulling off my clunky gloves, I lightly traced the edges of Traka’s gem, the tiny bumps of skin that grew up around it. Breathing a silent prayer that she wouldn’t wake up until it was over, I slid the tip of Arlen’s sword between those bumps and the gem.
Arlen gasped. “Dima, you can’t!”
I dug the sword deeper, not sure at all how deep I could go without poking into her brain. “Do you know what the gems do?”
“They’re the source of a dragon’s power,” he breathed. “You can’t take it away.”
I peered up at him over my shoulder. “Thula has no gem. Would you say she has no power?”
Arlen’s eyes flicked to Thula, who stood guard over the fire. His mouth opened
and closed.
“Do you honestly believe that’s what they do?” I asked, softer now.
Arlen scratched the back of his head. “It’s what I’ve always been told.”
I shook my head, gritting my teeth as I applied pressure to the hilt of the sword. Traka’s eyelids flickered. I wiggled the sword without letting up on the pressure.
“It’s the source of our power,” I grunted. “I can’t believe it took me so long to understand. Arlen, the Nobles use these to control the dragons. It’s why Thula can talk to me, and Elanich can’t talk to you.”
He drew in a sharp breath. “That’s why she chose you.”
I looked up. Wonder shone in his blue eyes.
“Someone took her gem, and now she’s free,” I said. “We have to do the same for Traka.”
I expected more hesitation, but Arlen leapt forward, digging his fingers into the groove I’d made in Traka’s forehead. He tugged while I used the tip of the sword to push from underneath.
Traka’s yellow eyes snapped, and she hissed in pain. Her head thrashed back, and Arlen went flying into the snow. Traka stood as much as the net would let her and bellowed into the sky.
“I’ve got it,” Arlen said, his voice reverent.
He waded toward me, holding out the gem. Dragon tissue clung to the back of it, dripping black blood. Traka shook her head, tongue lashing the air, and then she froze. Her head drooped in front of us, big yellow eyes blinking.
“Thank you.” Her voice filled my head, older and raspier than Thula’s.
Arlen whimpered, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. “She… she speaks.”
“They all do,” I said. “They’re all trapped.”
“Me more than most.” Traka tried to lift her wings.
“Did… did she just make a… a joke?” Arlen stuttered.
I nudged his arm. “Now you’re getting it.”
We found my sword, and with both of us working together, and with the help of Thula’s tail spikes, we were able to cut enough of the net that Traka reared up on her back legs and it slid right off. She stretched out her wings and shook off the snow.
Dragon Games Page 13
